Dances With Wolves, a lot better than Avatar

Someone has said that Avatar was Dancing With Wolves in space. It's true, the theme is the same: wicked white men advancing, but one white gets to know the natives and changes sides. But Dances With Wolves is much better. For some strange reason I didn't see it when it came out twenty years ago, but settled down to watch it last week-end, sadly on the small screen. How I wish someone would open a cinema to show great films like this on the big screen...Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zchivago, The Mission, Lion King...but back to the question. Why was Dances With Wolves so much better? The dialogue, unlike the sentimental cartoon twaddle of Avatar
, it was not just believable, but whether in Sioux or English, very human and at times humorous. Little touches like one of the Indians telling his wife to remember his teeth when she cooked the meat are typical. The slow pace of the film. Costner was saying, I've got a good story here, settle back, don't rush it. It's what I call a proper film, not like some of the modern ones with so many jumping scenes you get confused pretty quickly. And it is a good story, again much better than Avatar, not only because it's historical, but because for so long we don't know if John Dunbar is going to survive. Then he is accepted by the Sioux, and but then again when he's captured, we don't know what's going to happen, and if we'd seen Soldier Blue, we feared there was going to be some horrible massacre. There is serious believable tension in the plot which is absent from Avatar. Perhaps Costner could have done more to have had other decent whites instead of just Dunbar, but unlike Avatar where the natives are all innocent, he does a great job in depicting the Indians as yes, their own civilisation, but also flawed. They're as violent as the whites. The characters were much more three dimensional than the ones in Avatar. Again, because he's not rushing, we get to know Dunbar...he is a bit of an eccentric, and we get to know Stands With A Fist who he eventually marries, along with the other Indians - Kicking Bird, Ten Bears, Wind In His Hair. Of course the scenic experience of Avatar was stunning, but it was a cartoon, hardly any of it was real, and you feel that. And with Dances With Wolves you feel that it is real...as it is. There is no computer animation here. Those thundering buffaloes were exactly that...and those superb shots of the plains, the space, the sky...the camera made you thankful for creation, and made you understand why Dunbar said when asked why he wanted to go to this forlorn post...to see the frontier before it disappears. There's more, like the relationship with animals, the wolf and the horse, but the final crowning achievement of Costner's film over Cameron's is the music. I can't remember a tune from Avatar and wouldn't want to listen to it again...but if someone gave me a CD of John Barry's lovely melodies, I'd listen. Beautiful. The point of this blog...history, good stories, three dimensional characters, brillinat photography, human dialogue, and above all a proper pace with proper scenes...this is what makes Dances With Wolves worth watching twenty years on, and these are the ingredients of all good films.